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INTRODUCTION

By the time I got around to writing The Planetoid of Amazement my books were no longer quite so much in the Daniel Pinkwater mold. Pinkwater still inspired me and I still enjoyed reading his work, but since writing The Return of Captain Conquer I had developed confidence in my ability to write in my own style as it developed over the years.

I don’t remember much about the genesis of Planetoid, but I do note that it is another adventure in which our hero is dying of boredom living his placid middle-class life. I hadn’t written one of these since Captain Conquer. In between, the heroes of Harry Newberry and the Raiders of the Red Drink and Outer Space and All That Junk had other problems that needed solving.

Of course the problems of Rodney, the hero of Planetoid, are somewhat more complex than the problems Watson had in Captain Conquer. After all, Rodney is the son of Watson Congruent (of Captain Conquer fame) and Pennyperfect Leiberman, who had a leading role in Harry Newberry and the Raiders of the Red Drink. Both Watson and Pennyperfect have had their adventures, and Rodney is going crazy waiting for his turn. He gets it, of course. Grubber Young and Drum, his finder, give it to him.

Apparently, the whole idea of dying of boredom is a powerful one for me—and I’m not surprised. I don’t mean to say that I never had problems. I was after all a kid who lived in a big city of the real world. But most if not all of them were of the domestic variety. I grew up in a classic 1950s home: my father was a reliable self-made man, and my mother was a homemaker in the best sense of the word. I had two younger brothers, but we didn’t have much to do with each other except at mealtimes and around the TV set. I was mad for something interesting to happen.

I grew older and eventually I left home. When that happened I suffered through more adventures than I could easily handle. Many of these adventure were also domestic, but they involved people I barely knew and a serious lack of money. I didn’t think my friends would actually let me starve, but I felt as if I were living very close to the edge.

Rodney feels very close to the edge himself, what with the Chocolatron and his weird parents. But I’ve survived so far and so does he.

—Mel Gilden

Los Angeles, California

May 4, 2011